Coronavirus: CEPI begins work on three new vaccines

The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) has announced the initiation of three programmes to develop vaccines against coronavirus.

The programmes will leverage rapid response platforms already supported by CEPI as well as a new partnership.

"The aim is to advance nCoV-2019 vaccine candidates into clinical testing as quickly as possible," CEPI said in a statement.

CEPI was founded in Davos by the governments of Norway and India, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Wellcome Trust, and the World Economic Forum.

For developing these vaccines, CEPI has partnered with US-based biotech companies Inovio and Moderna; and the University of Queensland, Australia.

Inovio already has a partnership with CEPI for developing DNA vaccine candidates against Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), which is also caused by a family of coronavirus.

Moderna will manufacture an mRNA vaccine against nCoV-2019, which will be funded by CEPI.

So far there are no vaccines developed in the world against coronaviruses. The 2019 novel coronavirus is known to have infected hundreds of people so far, and Chinese authorities have now reported at least 17 deaths.

It was first identified in Wuhan in December and is said to have transmitted from animals to humans at a local seafood market that also sold other wild animal meats like snakes.

Authorities have since confirmed cases of human-to-human transmission.

The pathogen is a coronavirus, a member of a family of viruses that include severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), which caused major outbreaks in 2003 and 2012, respectively.

"The idea for this is can we get a vaccine (candidate) in four months and keep reducing that time. With at least two weeks from the genetic sequence of (novel corona) virus (by Chinese) we have three companies to develop these vaccines," said Dr Gagandeep Kang, Executive Director of the Translational Health Science and Technology Institute (THSTI), an autonomous institute under Department of Biotech Technology (DBT)

Kang said they have learnt many lessons during Ebola outbreak in Africa between 2014 and 2016, one of which is the delays in getting a vaccine out quickly. Merck has developed a vaccine, which was yet to be commercialised, Johnson & Johnson vaccine for Ebola is under development.

Currently,  there are no antivirals against respiratory viruses but Kang said that it is possible to develop humanised monoclonal antibodies in three weeks, to treat the patient.

The best the governments could do to contain the virus spreading is by quarantining high risk people and treating those who have associated symptoms.

"It is early days. But if the respiratory virus can kill young and healthy people it is something to worry about. And the other thing to worry about Coronaviruses is that, these are RNA viruses that mutate quite rapidly with high transmission," Kang added.

CEPI has secured $750 million toward its $1billion funding target, with multi-year funding from Norway, Germany, Japan, Canada, Australia, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Wellcome Trust.

CEPI's priority diseases include Ebola virus, Lassa virus, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus, Nipah virus, Rift Valley Fever and Chikungunya virus.

CEPI is funded by the CEPI, a group started by Norway and India, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Wellcome Trust and the World Economic Forum.